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The Closing of the American Mind (1987)

Author: Allan Bloom
Keywords: Allan Bloom; Leo Strauss; Nihilism; America; Liberal Education; Heidegger; Nietzsche; Marx; Socrates; Plato; Aristotle; Rousseau; Tocqueville; Social Science; Sixties; Liberalism; Political Science; Enlightenment; Max Weber; John Rawls; Habermas; Gadamer; Rorty; Isaiah Berlin; Multiculturalism; Relativism; Existentialism
Year: 1987
Language: English
Collection: opensource

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The complete text of Allan Bloom's great work on the decay of American life and the political-intellectual causes of the decline of humane learning. It is now more relevant and pertinent than when he wrote it over two decades ago.

Since its publication the most prestigious universities in America have seen a continual and ever more rapid decline in what little seriousness, depth, and intellectual discipline was left in them. This is true for both the students and especially the faculty. The most recent generations of academics are strangely more frivolous or enslaved to contemporary trends, fashions, and crass public opinions than those of merely three decades ago. The best european universities have followed down America's path, unable to resist the strength of its influence and (as Bloom says) gullible towards all fashionable innovations. Such conflicts as Philosophy/Revelation, or the grave questions about the deleterious effects of fanatical egalitarianism can hardly be appreciated. Candid discussions about the relations between the sexes have become nearly impossible or even dangerous as a result of a persistant and insidious soft moralism.

In Britain, where academic bigotry, cowardice, and historical prejudices reign, Allan Bloom's name is an anathema among academics: his books are despised. In order to escape having to make the efforts necessary to confront his ideas, they are disdainfully ignored. In France, Germany, Japan, and now China Bloom's reflections have been received with greater openness, introspection, and engagement.

Nevertheless, as far as this writer is aware, the book has rarely been appreciated for what it is, even by its friends and supporters.

The book's power and profundity are demonstrated by its continued ability to stir up blind indignation, hatred among the ignorantly sophisticated, and to bring infamy upon its author, even though he has been dead these last 17 years. In short, Bloom's analysis goes directly to the core of the most thoughtlessly held prejudices of our time. It is an untimely book, and more than a book.

This scanned version is offered especially to those students in universities across the country who long to become something, to know the true, the good, and the beautiful, and who (unwittingly) seek an experience of greatness which has been denied to them. Bloom can be a true friend & guide to the student lost in the fetid Hades of the contemporary university.



http://www.archive.org/details/AllanBloomTheClosingOfTheAmericanMind

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Reviewer: Jim Mitchell - - March 7, 2013
Subject: Incontestable Brilliance !
Read it years ago. He warns against reducing all knowledge to mere opinion, and explains how the tyranny of relativism leaves us all at the mercy of a pseudo-intellectual elite who are never really as relativistic as they pretend since all is relative to something. Underlying all relativistic approaches are some sort of absolutist assumptions.

Reviewer: calends - - November 13, 2012
Subject: Absolutely necessary to understand today's educational failures
This is exactly why Bloom wrote the book:

"I read this book years ago; it's a standard rightwing screed enlivened by academic pretentiousness.You see, only the elect can understand how everything used to be better in the time of Plato; Bloom invites YOU to become the undergrad who belongs to this superior group!"

People like the reviewer above, Jeffrey, do not care about the content of The Closing of the American Mind, only its perceived political affiliations and "underlying motives." The fact that Jeffrey charges Bloom with elitism shows, beyond any doubt, that he hasn't even read the book. Bloom routinely praises non-intellectuals as having more of a soul than the New student. It's the elites that have jammed "openness" and democratic relativism down the throats of the populace. Philosophy always trickles down to the "common person" from the institutes of "higher learning." Bloom was definitely not a Platonist. He was also apolitical and criticized both the right and left for their failures. Bloom was a homosexual atheist. Hardly an "elite conservative." Besides, doesn't Jeffrey realize that almost all intellectuals these days are of the liberal mindset and would be guilty of his elitism?

Reviewer: Martialis - - March 2, 2009
Subject: Precisely!
The foregoing comment indicates precisely why this book is (and will continue to be) so necessary for students today.

It is good to hear confirmed that the Closing of the American Mind is still relevant.

Reviewer: jeffryhouse - - March 2, 2009
Subject: elitst claptrap
I read this book years ago; it's a standard rightwing screed enlivened by academic pretentiousness.

You see, only the elect can understand how everything used to be better in the time of Plato; Bloom invites YOU to become the undergrad who belongs to this superior group!

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